Overview

Looking out for each other in the shop and the labs and considering the importance of other people's safety while you, or they, work is very important. If you see someone working in an unsafe manner, advise them that you think they are being unsafe and offer advice if you can. There are not necessarily lifeguards in this pool, but you can and should act as one when you can.

Safety is not just about physical injury. For information about how to treat each other to make this a safe space, please see the Membership Agreement.

The Asylum's two main safety priorities, in order of importance, are:

Ensuring the safety of people, including renters, tool operators, and bystanders; and

Ensuring the safety of the Asylum's equipment.

If you choose to use tools or other resources in an unsafe manner, or outside the scope of their capability, don't expect future access to these resources.

Emergency

Safety Equipment

First Aid Kits

Emergency Eyewash Stations

There are four emergency eyewash stations located in the building. Two are large units that use cartridges and two are small units which use bottles. Both cartridges and bottles are sealed and must be replaced after use. Please familiarize yourself with these eyewash stations before you need to use them by watching this training video. There is no cost associated with using eyewash stations in an emergency, so do not hesitate to use them if necessary. After use, please e-mail maintenance@ so the cartridges/bottles can be replaced as soon as possible.

Having a nonworking eyewash station is more dangerous than having no eyewash station at all. For this reason, if you trigger an eyewash station for anything other than emergency use, you will be charged for replacement cartridges.

You must always be trained on and comfortable using a tool. If at any time you are unsure of what you are doing, stop immediately and ask for help.

You must always use a tool as it is designed to be used.

You must always ensure a tool is in good working order before using it. If you begin using a tool and it is somehow unsafe, stop immediately, leave a note on the tool that it is unsafe, and notify maintenance@artisansasylum.com.

User responsibilities

This is not limited to members, but day pass and corporate associates users as well!

Know the current operation procedures for the equipment. This includes reading the manual on new equipment you may not have used IE (You trained on the Powermatic 15hh but want to now use the Powermatic 22” planer) This information can be found on the wiki. Ignorance is not an excuse.

Know the current operation procedures for any related equipment. This includes dust collection, ventilation, feed tables, etc.

Don’t leave projects out in the shop. Especially don’t leave projects out without labels on it. See our Tidy Space Policy for how to tag your in progress projects to avoid them being discarded.

If you are going to consume things, bring things to consume. Saw blades, drill bits, sand paper etc all have a service life. Bring your own if you are going to be doing a bunch of volume.

Bring your own PPE. You should have your own Safety glasses, hearing protection, welding gloves, etc when you come to work. If your PPE is not comfortable you will not wear it. Don’t buy the cheapest possible when it comes to keeping your eyes intact. Rx-safety.com can do prescription safety glasses. http://amzn.to/1UfnM5n for hearing protection is a popular choice. Having your own PPE will be more comfortable for you and encourage you to use safety equipment.

Ready to use

Know what the “Ready to Use” state should be. This includes a clean tool that can be used as expected by the next user. This is a Pay it forward type of environment. There is a saying “Leave this world a little better than you found it” This should apply to the shops. The majority of users do their best to leave equipment ready for the next member.

The space is cleaned and maintained by you (the members of the space). It is the responsibility of each member to clean up after themselves. You should always leave the space in better shape than you found it.

Plan time accordingly. You know you need to clean up. A project is going to take 1.5x what you think it will. Clean up will take 20% of your time. You should also be spending time giving back to the asylum volunteering based on the time you use the shop. This can be a completely self-serving task. If you spend 20 hours in the wood shop a week, you should be giving back two hours in some way. Cleaning and taking out the trash is easiest choice. Organizing, updating documentation, testing others are also great ways to accomplish this. If you are an employee of a member company and are in the shop 40 hours a week, this is not just a service you are using. This is a community and you have a responsibility to give back to make this work. This means on top of doing the expected clean up after yourself you should also be improving the space. If you as a member bring contractors in, you are responsible for this. You should either put in the time yourself, or have your contractor take care of it.

If you are going to take off after a big project and travel, pay someone to clean up after you.

If someone is leaving a mess and breaking tools, they may not fit with our model and should go elsewhere.

When something breaks…

If you break equipment or find something broken report it to the Maintenance Team, a group of members interested in maintaining tools at maintenance[at]artisansasylum[dot]com. In addition, either CC or send a separate message to the mailing list for the shop. The faster it’s reported the quicker it’ll be fixed.

Send as many details as you can including observations, a diagnosis and links to replacement parts when available

If you break a tool doing something you know to be wrong best practice is to pay for the repair parts and help with the repair. You may not know how to do the repair, but hanging out with someone more experienced is a great way to learn! The more you know about the inner workings of the tool, the better your projects will become.

We have a ticket tracking system that will update our wiki in real time if you tag the tool as broken using the QR code on the tool.